Thanks, Steven, for a thought-provoking post. There was a great article in Fast Company (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/) this month entitled "The Walmart You DON"T Know." Basically the premise is that in driving prices down (and profits up, each of the 5 heirs to Sam Walton is worth about $18 billion. Not a misprint, EACH!) Walmart forces American companies to out-source labor. One can only sell to Walmart if you send jobs overseas to reduce costs. In the short term that means that consumers can buy cheap products. But in the long-term, as those same consumers lose their jobs or accept pay-cuts, they will only be able to afford cheap products. Ironically, Sam Walton, the founder, was a big supporter of carrying American made goods and clearly labeling them as such.

In the old days, there was a saying that "Whats good for General Motors, is good for the USA." That is no longer the case. In the world economy, the lines have blurred.

Thanks for a very thought-provoking reply.

When the churches leave Christ, the nation goes downhill. Our Christian roots have been replaced with atheism (yes, schools teach religion) and if we continue in this our nation will self destruct.

America for the most part is a giant consumer whore with little or no delay of gratification and this is evident in everything they do. Two years in a row people have died by being trampled at Wal-Mart during it's opening Xmas day sales spree. Americans want everything cheap so corporations must go to other countries such as China, Korea, Tiawan, etc. so they can pay people a few pennies an hour to do the work that a greedy, fat, lazy american wants at least $12 and hour to do. It is good business sense for the corporations. On the bad side Great Britian before world war two use to brag about its intellectual ability to outsource all it's goods and if it wasn't for America England would be filled with Germans today because they had few industries within its own borders. We could shut all our borders and start creating our own products and we would be fine because America imports more that it exports. But that would not fit someone's plan for a world economy. Hell we'll even knowingly let chinese agents into our top nuclear sites to steal our advance nuclear designs in order to open trading with them. Or did you forget about that, oh yeah Clinton covered that up with a sex scandal which really says something about the people of America's attention span. ~chuckles~